1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and an apparatus for capturing video frames, and more particularly, to a method and an apparatus for capturing consecutive frames in digital video.
2. Description of the Related Art
The television broadcast has been digitalized, and the television programs are manufactured and transmitted by digital compression. By using such digitalization technique, it does not only provide video signals with higher quality, but also eliminates the defects of the video distortion or blurs caused by the signal interference in the conventional television. In addition, since all of the programs are transmitted in digital signals, only one storage device is required in the receiving side to record and preserve the digital broadcast data, thus it is very convenient for the users.
In addition to the way for receiving the television broadcast program signals mentioned above, the Digital Video Disc (DVD) also provides an alternative for watching the programs or the DVD titles on the TV. As long as the user bought a DVD player, the user can play the rented DVDs on their TV, which also achieves the same AV entertainment effect provided by the conventional television broadcast programs.
However, while the TV is used to watch the broadcast programs or the DVD titles, it is quite common that the user desires to record the fabulous frames or program clips that are shown on the TV. Nevertheless, since these video programs are made of consecutive video images, even the video frames can be recorded by the still function provided by the conventional recording equipment, only one single video frame can be captured at a time, and because the time point for capturing the video frames is hard to control, usually it is difficult to precisely capture the fabulous frames. In addition, since most of the conventional recording equipments do not support the function of recording video frames, it will be too bad if the interesting video frames cannot be recorded due to the reasons mentioned above.